Whether boring a Ballard-to-Wallingford tunnel for millions of gallons of stormwater and sewage or installing culverts in the Tolt River watershed, consultants are essential to projects big and small overseen by Seattle Public Utilities (SPU). But which civil engineering and environmental consulting firms typically land those contracts?
Historically, larger national firms have scooped up most of this work, then brought on subconsultants. That status quo has made it challenging for small firms looking to grow, especially those that qualify as Women and Minority Owned Business Enterprises, or WMBEs.
“The smaller businesses just can’t compete with the larger firms who have more resources,” said SPU Contracts and Procurement Division Manager Jana Duran.
But SPU has since revised some of its processes to help provide greater access and more opportunities for young businesses and women and minority-owned businesses (WMBE) firms. Their efforts are part of a larger commitment by the City to make contracting more equitable.
Seattle is the recipient of a $1 million Bloomberg Procurement Transformation Grant, a partnership between the Department of Finance and Administrative Services and the Mayor’s Innovation and Performance Team, with support from the Harvard Kennedy School Government Performance Lab. The project aims to transform City procurement to be more efficient, results-driven, equitable, and strategic. As part of this, the City is highlighting a multi-part series of stories that demonstrate Citywide promising practices that can better support our WMBEs and this month’s feature highlights SPU’s work.
SPU oversees $35 million annually in contracts. That purchasing power creates significant sway over the private engineering market. SPU currently pursues a policy of equity in contracting, or making efforts to achieve equitable racial outcomes in the way the City of Seattle contracts for goods and services. In recent years, SPU has employed several innovative procurement practices in order to further that goal.
Most significantly, SPU established a set of rotational on-call contracts for small projects. An on-call rotation means there is always a qualified engineering firm available for any type of work within a range of categories. This approach saves the Utility from having to solicit bids for every project and instead assign the work as it arises to a firm already under contract.
When SPU switched to the rotational on-call system in 2020, it also made two tweaks. First, the Utility created a small business category on the application. Second, it modified the preexisting WMBE template specifically for this on-call mechanism to ensure teams include WMBE subconsultants for a wide range of work supported by this set of contracts.
These intentional efforts ensured that large engineering firms would not automatically scoop up all the work and instead smaller firms would have a chance to “prime” or serve as primary consultants. This change from business as usual does require that contract managers adopt a different mindset. “It’s not always going to be the quickest, most streamlined or easiest pathway forward,” said Duran. “But we’re still getting a really high quality product. These smaller firms can lead the work.”
One such firm is Portland-based Leeway Engineering Solutions. Founder Rob Lee struck out on his own in 2019 after reaching what felt like a “bamboo ceiling” of limited leadership opportunities as an Asian American working at large engineering firms with thousands of employees.
Lee had worked on SPU projects at prior employers. He attended a large introductory meeting about the new on-call system and also met one on one with SPU Contract Manager Shailee Sztern. The combination of a big platform announcement and individualized attention encouraged him to throw his hat into the ring.
His firm was one of eight consultant teams in the first set of rotational on-call contracts working on key SPU priorities like the pipe rehabilitation program and infiltration and inflow, or the issue of clean water overwhelming sewer systems. Among its flashier work, Leeway Engineering Solutions successfully rehabilitated a failing 3 by 5 foot culvert under I-5 in downtown for $500,000, saving ratepayers the much greater expense of drilling a new line.
Leeway went from a sole proprietorship to four employees and now eight. Early on, SPU work accounted for one-third of the company’s portfolio.
“I had the chance to push people into roles they would not have gotten at other firms,” he said. “We wouldn’t be where we are today if it wasn’t for the SPU rotational on-calls.”